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A great big congratulations is in order to our friends at Schoolhouse Electric on their 10th anniversary! We were so happy to celebrate with them at an old-fashioned BBQ picnic on the front loading dock. There was lots of good food (Salt & Straw ice cream!) and cute kids, as well as new puppy on the block, the Boston Terrier "Blue". Oh and gorgeous flowers by Anna Mara, of course!

Schoolhouse Electric has come a long way in 10 years and we are so excited to see what they have up their sleeve for the next decade. You can check out founder and owner, Brian Faherty, speaking at this year's TEDxPortland event here.

**UPDATE: We have a winner-- a big congrats to Lauren (Laurenhickers)! Thank you so much to everyone who entered. That was fun! We LOVED hearing all your great Dad-isms. Happy Father's Day to all you great Dad's out there from your friends at Egg Press.

In honor of all the Dad's out there we're hosting a fun Father's Day Giveaway! We know that a lot of well-meaning Dads are caught unprepared for card-giving occasions so we're giving away a YEAR'S WORTH OF CARDS to one lucky Dad.

THAT WAY, WHETHER IT'S A BIRTHDAY, GRADUATION, OR VALENTINE'S DAY, YOUR DAD NO LONGER HAS AN EXCUSE TO NOT SEND A CARD.

Jayson:
Every time our family would go out to dinner, without fail, my dad would try the same 3 joke during the course of the evening, and we always responded with the same groans of embarrassment.

The first joke (holding menu upside down): "Hey, they printed the whole menu upside down!"
The second joke (to the waitress after he finished his drink): "Nurse, I think someone put a sponge in my glass."
The third joke (after the meal was finished): "I feel more like I do now then when we first got here."

We recently got to do a really fun custom print job for the upcoming wedding of a couple of wonderful Portlanders. We were so inspired by all the creativity and thoughtfulness that Chris and Laura were putting into their wedding that we wanted to know more about their special day.

Thank you Chris and Laura for taking time out to talk to us during this busy time. We are so honored to have been able to play a small role in your wedding. Congratulations to you both!!

***

We are Chris Dyer and Laura Althouse, and we're getting married this July at Peninsula Park in North Portland. Chris is a nurse at the county jail, Laura is an in-house attorney for a company called Qmedtrix. We met two years ago after being introduced by mutual friends--we like to joke that they won the matchmaker World Series since it's resulting in a marriage. In all seriousness, we do owe them a huge debt of gratitude--who knew back then that this simple little get-together would turn into all of this?

Can you tell me about the lemon preserves and how the print job evolved?

We like to make things around the house--we're both really into cooking, making pickles, crafting cocktails at home, that sort of thing. When we were thinking about what to give our guests as wedding favors, we knew we wanted it to be something homemade, and the preserved lemons came to mind right away. They have an incredible savory flavor, great for cooking with; Meyer lemons were in season as opposed to using out-of-season berries for jam, or waiting for summer pickling cucumbers that would have us working on a really tight deadline; best of all, they're really bright and beautiful.

So then, when we met with Cassie at Egg Press, a lemon motif for our printed materials was one of the ideas we brought to the table. We batted around a couple of floral ideas and things of that sort, but it was clear from the outset that everyone was pretty excited about the lemon idea--especially Cassie. Soon, she sent us some proofs of different layouts and font options, all with this really beautiful and naturalistic lemon motif. We did some back and forth emailing to get everything just right, went in to settle on some colors from the Pantone book, and ended up with these really lovely products. We're super excited for our guests to see these. And of course we had a few extras printed for us to keep.

Cassie at Egg Press was really great to work with--she always let us know what our options were, gave us lots of room for input, but wasn't afraid to direct things either. And the results are lovely.

If I have it right, you mentioned you were donating to a marriage equality organization--can you tell me more about that?

We are making a donation, on behalf of all our guests, to The Human Rights Campaign. We feel exceedingly fortunate that we can do this thing--get married--and face basically no barriers. Sure, there's lots of planning and organizing involved, and a little bit of bureaucracy to deal with, but basically, it's easy. We met, we fell in love, we decided to do this, and now it's happening. Done.

For millions of others out there--including close friends, former lovers, family members--the same option doesn't exist to cement their love and commitment in this way, or if it does, it's severely truncated. We feel strongly that we have a responsibility to advocate for others to have the same basic rights we can so easily access, and that the legalization of marriage for the LGBTQ community is among the most important movements of our times.

What has the process of planning your wedding been like?

It's actually been really fun so far. We feel fortunate that we are managing to pull off a pretty DIY wedding that's going to be pretty much how we want it to be. We're really excited about every aspect--Peninsula Park is going to be beautiful; the Firehouse Restaurant, where we're having our reception, is one of our favorite neighborhood joints; we're doing lots of our own crafts and decoration; the flowers are being done by our friend Sara at Solabee Flowers; we absolutely love our photographers, Daniel and Lindsay Stark. The pieces are all falling into place nicely, and we can't wait to share it all with our friends and family.

What makes your wedding uniquely you?

Well, we're planning it ourselves from top to bottom. One of our closest friends is our officiant, we're writing our own vows, making the music mixes ourselves, relying on the great help of several friends to help us pull off all the day-of logistics, the list goes on. More than anything though, we're packing it full of the absolutely best family and friends we have.

It's going to be a really great day.

And the bride wore...

Laura is going to be wearing a beautiful dress by local designer Elizabeth Dye. Chris, not that you asked, is wearing a suit made by the folks over at Duchess Clothiers in SE Portland. We really wanted to keep this thing as local as possible, right down to the clothes. And we're going to look really good together.

Do you have a song?

We're going to be doing our first dance to "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing" by The Magnetic Fields, off of their great 69 Love Songs. I guess you could say that will be our song.

Chris is planning the music for the reception. Guests can expect a wide range of indie rock, pop, reggae, jazz, hip hop, afro-beat, soul, and folk music, not to mention many many many R&B sex jams.